the occasional post

In Marathon I am Sisyphus. As a runner, I am condemned to many lifetimes of toil. If everything goes right, one of those lifetimes can last up to 25 minutes. If even one thing goes wrong, that life can be over in seconds.

I am unbothered by these frequent setbacks. My progress will be wiped at the end of the season either way.

Each Marathon session begins with a choice. It’s choices all the way through, honestly. What shell do I want to load in as this time? If I’m alone I’ll be an agile Vandal or a cautious Recon. If I’m trying to complete contracts for my handlers, I’ll be the sneaky and occasionally invisible Assassin. If I’m playing in a team of three I’ll almost always be a Triage. Somebody has to be the healer. Although, if I want to be able to double jump, I may still opt for Vandal. And now that I think about it, Destroyer can run fast. And Thief has that drone…

Each Marathon session begins… well it begins with a whole lot of inventory management, honestly. Am I going to take my best equipment planetside and risk losing it all, or am I going in with a free sponsored kit? I like to treat each session like a run in a roguelike, starting with a sponsored kit and using whatever I can exfiltrate with from there. If I get good guns, I’ll use them in my next run. Along the way I’ll dump extra healing items or unused ammo or spare weapons into my vault. That continues until I die and lose everything.

Unless my vault is full. If my vault is full I’m going to load in with a good kit and play like a maniac with a death wish.

The setting is Tau Ceti IV. You play as a “runner” who, many many years after a failed colonization effort, uploads your consciousness into a “shell” (a robot body 3D printed by silkworms) to scrounge, explore, and fulfill various obligations for the corporate entities funding the enterprise. Along the way you’ll kill, die, and discover clues about the fate of the doomed colonists and the UESC Marathon ship floated dead over the planet.

The most important thing you can have at any given time in any given run is information. The first information I get, most of the time, is about my teammates. I play random fill trios, so my immediate concern is team synergy. How do our shells work together? Do we have a Triage or a Destroyer? What contracts are my teammates trying to fulfill. Do they have microphones? How are we going to proceed?

From there a run becomes much less predictable. Generally the teams will all spread out on the map, some eventually meeting where the best loot might be and getting into a fight. The others will hear the gunshots. They will see birds take flight. That is information. Do we want to use that information to stage an ambush, or do we want to go the opposite direction?

Enemies can of course be killed and looted. You can be killed and looted, too. No loot is safe on Tau Ceti IV.

No shell is safe on Tau Ceti IV, either. The harsh atmosphere degrades the shells rapidly. They can only survive on the planet for 25 minutes at a time. We’ll have to find an exfiltration beacon before that.

Activating the exfil starts a one-minute timer and sends a bright blue beam of light shooting into the sky. That light is information. Now everyone else on the map knows exactly where we are and exactly what we’re trying to do. They have a hundred reasons to try to stop us. You can assume anyone trying to exfil has loads of loot, so it’s a great spot to commit murder and steal gear. A successful exfil will also remove the beacon from the map, limiting options for the remaining players.

Exfil or die, the runner’s consciousness will be uploaded into another shell, ready to load up for another run. Survival is not an option.

Or you can be a Rook.

Rook is a rat. A scavenger. Load into a Rook shell and you’ll drop, alone, into a map full of trio teams well into the match in progress. Your goal is to sneak around and fill your pockets. If you run into a coordinated team of three, you’ll probably die. If you run into a scattered team of three with no microphones, you may kill a couple. If you run into other Rooks, you can choose to run together as a pack. Good luck trusting each other as the exfil timer counts down.

I don’t want to review Marathon. I don’t really find myself wanting to “review” anything really. I just want to write about things I like sometimes, and I really, really like Marathon.

Marathon season 2 starts today, and the game is free June 2-9 on all platforms. Try it out and find me. My gamertag is Sisyphus.